David John Matthews was born on January 9, 1967 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Matthews family consisted of four children: Dave, two sisters Anne and Jane and a brother Peter. Two years later, his family migrated to Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, New York, where his physicist father went to work for IBM. The elder Matthews encouraged Dave to take piano lessons as a child before he picked up the guitar at age nine. After living in New York, his family moved to Cambridge, England in the early 1970s before returning to the States, where his father died of lung cancer in 1977. In 1980, the family moved back to South Africa, where the young Matthews went to several schools.
Upon his graduation from high-school, he was required to put in two years of compulsory military service, a requirement of the South African government. Coming from a devoutly Quaker family, military service was not an option, and his mother implored University of Virginia to accept her son in honor of his father, who had once worked there in the physics department. In 1986 Matthews relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia, where his parents had lived before he was born.
Though he also spent time back in South Africa, and also in Amsterdam, it was in Charlottesville that he became part of the local music community. Pursuing various interests, Matthews tried his hand on stage, acting in various local productions. While enthusiastic for music, and a popular bartender at a local watering hole called Miller’s, Matthews was intimidated by the quality of the local actors and largely shied away from performing publicly. But local star (and future collaborator) Tim Reynolds finally goaded Matthews to join him on stage one night, and Matthews stunned the audience with his performance. In 1990 he hatched the idea to form his own band.
The Dave Matthews Band (DMB) formed in Charlottesville Virginia in the early 1990s. Lead man Dave Matthews, had the original idea to play music that a large audience could appreciate. After playing with various musicians, Matthews was introduced to drummer Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who were both accomplished jazz musicians in the local Charlottesville music scene. Sometime soon after, Dave Matthews was introduced to Stefan Lessard, sixteen year-old musical prodigy. Completing the band was violinist Boyd Tinsley.
By playing various public shows and house parties, the band’s audience grew at an incredible rate. The band’s first gig was on May 11, 1991, at a private rooftop party. The Charlottesville clubs started to fill up rapidly, and the tours began to cover a large amount of territory. On November 9, 1993, they released their first album, Remember Two Things. Recorded live at The Muse Music Club on Nantucket Island, the album debuted on College charts as the highest independence entry, and was soon certified gold by the RIAA. The band’s personal opinion was that everybody should be allowed to tape their shows for personal use. This is perhaps one of the foremost reasons why their popularity has grown at such a substantial rate.
In 1994, The Dave Matthews Band released their first official album, Under the Table and Dreaming. While living in South Africa, his sister Anne was murdered by her husband in 1994. The Grammy nominated album Under The Table and Dreaming is dedicated to her. Immediately after release, the band began their first countrywide tour. After touring for over a year and a half, the album had been certified four times platinum by the RIAA. In April of 1996, the Dave Matthews Band released Crash, which entered the charts at number two and quickly went platinum. Throughout 1996, the group toured behind Crash, sending it to double-platinum status.
Their second album, Crash, released April 30, 1996, debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. The Dave Matthews Band was now one of the highest-selling shows in North America, and when their first live album, Live at Red Rocks, was released, it debuted at number three and was instantly certified platinum without ever having been promoted or marketed.
In 2004, Dave Matthews decided to go solo and released his first solo album, Some Devil. The first single, “Gravedigger,” earned Matthews a well-deserved Grammy.
Matthews married his girlfriend of 8 years, Jennifer Ashley Harper on August 10, 2000. Ashley gave birth to their twin daughters Stella Busina and Grace Anne on August 15, 2001. The family splits their time between Seattle, Washington and Charlottesville, Virginia. Although Dave was raised as a Quaker, he now considers himself to be agnostic.
Matthews is a naturalized United States citizen and identifies strongly with American culture and politics. However, as he stated in his famous essay “My African Heart,” “I go back to South Africa at least once a year, sometimes twice, and usually for a month…to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself.” On his trips back to South Africa, Dave can often be found frequenting his local, the Roxy Rhythm Bar in Melville, a suburb of Johannesburg.
